Month: May 2019

Join us on the edge of the Hardangervidda Plateau in Norway or in the stunning Southern Alps in New Zealand for an action-packed week of Polar & Expedition Medicine. This world-renowned practical course gives you the opportunity to experience and become fully immersed in a polar environment first hand, where you’ll travel by ski, snowshoes and dogsled as well as experience an overnight stay in your own carefully constructed snow shelter.

Led by our expert team, all of whom bring a phenomenal amount of expertise and knowledge of polar and high-altitude environments, you’ll learn the essential expedition medical skills required to care for and treat illnesses and injuries likely to occur in this harsh environment.

The course aims to enable attendees to:

Increase their knowledge about Polar Medicine and learn the essentials of polar travel, survival and cold weather medicine while immersed in a polar environment

Develop leadership and decision making skills required when working in resource-limited environments

Enhance knowledge and skills relating to understanding, diagnosing and treating cold weather and altitude illnesses and injuries when presented

Understand and develop the non-technical skills required for Polar Medicine and Expeditions in general, such as leadership and decision making skills, teamwork and being able to work together in an under-resourced austere environment

What will l learn on the Polar Medicine course?
Through hands-on workshops and scenarios, this highly practical course is supported by a comprehensive curriculum of cold weather and altitude medicine, taught through lectures and fully immersive workshops. You’ll cover a range of topics, such as avalanche awareness, basic navigation, primary survival in the wilderness, pre-expedition planning as well as shelter construction and cold water immersion and hypothermia, all preparing you for work, expeditions and micro-adventures in polar and high-altitude environments.

Who would benefit from attending this course?
Expedition medicine offers an exciting combination of medical practice and the outdoors, so any health professional who is involved in medicine in the outdoors and is interested or considering accompanying a cold weather expedition would benefit the most. If you are willing to think and work outside the box this is a great course for you.

With the role of an expedition medic requiring many skills, our Polar Medicine course offers the perfect opportunity to learn new skills and enhance your basic expedition knowledge as well as focus on key cold weather and high-altitude survival skills in the extreme.

Our expert team of medics, logisticians and SAR professionals will be combining lectures, workshops and discussions with lots of hands-on experience to give course participants vital insight into the preparation required for an expedition as well as the ability to cope under pressure and perform to the best of their ability in an austere and resource-limited environment.

From this course, they can go anywhere. They could provide medical support for scientists working in Antarctica, become a medic on a polar expedition or with more training go on to work in other exciting areas and austere environments.”

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Where else in the world could you receive such hands-on experience, be part of a unique learning experience and have an adventure of a lifetime. To find out more and to experience our Polar Medicine course for yourself, please click here.

Take your EXTREME medical career to the next level – book your place today!

A few months ago on the mainstage at #WEM18, Medical Historian Dr Emily Mayhew discussed her work alongside Save the Children, Imperial College London and a host of medical and operational experts in the creation of a new Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual.

The Manual, intended to be a comprehensive guide for local medical teams who are forced to operate on and treat children in remote environments and with limited training and resources, is the first of its kind to focus on paediatric blast injury from the point of wounding right through to the discharge of the patient from hospital, and beyond.

Last week witnessed the culmination of this fantastic team effort as the Manual was made available to the public. We caught up with Emily to see what she had to say about the release…

“I first spoke about the plans for our Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual at WEM’s conference in 2018. The interest and expert feedback I received from the WEM audience was really important in encouraging us to move forward with our concept of a Field Manual that could be used by all medical staff likely to encounter children injured by explosives – an incredibly challenging patient cohort. We hope the result will be used by both medics and those who are required to plan for the treatment of severely injured children, in terms of resources, training and equipment.

We’ve produced the Field Manual to support medics with technical information that helps them adapt their existing knowledge to the needs of children and also to provide confidence in what can be a very difficult moment for even the most experienced teams. We’ve incorporated sections on safeguarding, futility and psycho-social support – for the patients, their families and caregivers, and for the medics themselves who do this work.

We hope it will be useful. Please pass it around and come and find me at #WEM19 to share your thoughts”.

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Why is this Manual needed?

It is estimated that today, a fifth of children worldwide live in areas affected by conflict. This equates to approximately 420 million children living in conflict zones (Save the Children define this as an area within 50km of where one or more conflict events took place in a given year). Children living in these zones face an increased risk of injury as a result of explosive weapons, as well as a shortage of equipment and specialist knowledge when treating such injuries.

The Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual is a durable, easy-to-use tool intended to bridge this gap, providing medical staff with the information needed to help make complex decisions about paediatric care.

The Manual is now available to download FREE from the Imperial College website.

Dr Mayhew will be at the World Extreme Medicine Conference in Edinburgh later this year and would love to hear your thoughts – grab your tickets here!

We asked our remarkable WEM faculty, many of who have a depth of experience, living and working in the most remote corners of the world, achieving notable success in the face of extreme challenge and adversity the most frequently asked questions they get asked regarding this course.

What content do you cover in the Expedition and Wilderness course?
This comprehensive course covers a broad range of topics over the course of the 4 days blending engaging lecture content with hands on practical workshops ending on the last day with a real-time search and rescue simulation. Attending the course will teach you the key skills essential to all expedition medics including:

Pre-expedition planning

Security on expeditions

Climate specific lectures

Group management, behaviour and CRM

Expedition dentistry

Mental health on expeditions

Hill skills

Wound care

Are these courses just for doctors?
No, expedition medicine opportunities are open to a wide range of medical professionals although doctors, nurses and paramedics are the most common roles advertised for. The good news is this list is growing as the range of practitioner roles within healthcare grows. We have also found that as the expedition world evolves and groups with more complex needs are commonly taking part in expeditions, the range of healthcare providers required can be incredibly varied.

Do I need experience?
No experience required, you’ll find on the course there is a huge mix of people with various degrees of expedition and travel experience. Throughout the course we’ll be discussing what skills are needed to build and make yourself a great expedition medic, but above all a great expedition team member or even leader. All we ask from you to really gain the most from this experience is a positive mindset and a thirst for adventure.

Do we get outside much?
Absolutely, we try and spend half the day outside so we can replicate real-life expedition conditions as much as possible. Typically this is come rain or shine, adverse conditions are all part of what makes expedition medicine so exciting, splinting a leg while dealing with soggy boots, soaking wet waterproofs, mud, driving rain, wind and on uneven ground is great fun…there again it could be lovely sunny t-shirt weather, you never can predict these things in the mountains. It’s uncommon to get enough time to stray too far into the hills so we suggest that people add another day or two to really enjoy the local environment. Plas y Brenin for example has a view of Snowdon from the bar and dining area, with the mountain in view it would be a shame not to set a few hours aside to get up there.

I’ve got a trip planned; will we be able to discuss it?
Yes, absolutely it’s actively encouraged and part of what are highly experienced faculty are here to help you with! We encourage as much interaction as possible; you can ask questions at any time and workshops session are highly interactive. Our team is with you all week and are always happy to chat about upcoming adventures, we find that breaks and meals are a great time to sit down and chat with the team about your plans.

If you want to open up your medical career and mix adventure into your career then this is the course for you!

To find out more information about our Expedition and Wilderness Medicine courses or to book your place on what we promise will be an incredibly inspiring 4 days, please click here.

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